Visuospatial working memory in adolescents with poor performance in mathematics: variation depending on reading skills

Abstract

The first purpose of this study was to investigate whether the visuospatial working memory (VSWM) skills of 15–16‐year‐old pupils with difficulties in mathematics differ from those of their normally achieving peers. The goal was to broaden the view of the complex system of VSWM. A set of passive and active VSWM tasks was used. The study’s second purpose was to investigate whether pupils with mathematical difficulties differed in their VSWM skills based on whether they had signs of reading deficits or not. Results indicate that the pupils with poor performance in maths showed poorer performance on certain VSWM tasks. The group with deficits only in maths had less capacity for storing passive visual simultaneous information, while the group with difficulties both in maths and reading had deficits in both storing (passive visual and visuospatial information) and processing, and had less ability to control irrelevant visuospatial information compared to their peers of the same age. The results indicate a general VSWM deficit in pupils with both mathematics and reading problems and a specific VSWM deficit in pupils with only mathematics problems.

Keywords:

• visuospatial working memory
• working memory
• mathematical skills
• mathematical disability

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the pupils and teachers who participated in this research, as well as Juhani Lehto, Jarkko Hautamäki, and the two anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.